Surrey Community Action

Surrey Community Action

Non-profit Organizations

Guildford, Surrey 499 followers

Helping you to help others

About us

Surrey Community Action supports & strengthens the voluntary, community and faith sector through access to advice, training, funding and advocacy. The organisation: - Influences the agenda with funding bodies, partners and the VCF community; - Provides a range of support services for organisations and individuals in the VCF sector; - Delivers projects where there are gaps that others cannot fill or where new tools and techniques can be piloted.

Industry
Non-profit Organizations
Company size
11-50 employees
Headquarters
Guildford, Surrey
Type
Nonprofit
Founded
1950

Locations

Employees at Surrey Community Action

Updates

  • The Civil Society Covenant is a new agreement to improve the relationship between civil society and government. The Covenant will: -support collaboration between civil society organisations and government -ensure respect for the different roles we play, and protect our independence support all public bodies and civil society organisations -build on and support existing agreements in place at a local level -complement other arrangements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A strong, two-way relationship is vital to ensure organisations like yours can achieve your mission. Please give your feedback on the draft here: https://lnkd.in/egrnCiuu

  • Has your organisation experienced an increase in scam emails?

    View profile for Jason Gaskell, graphic

    Chief Executive at Surrey Community Action

    I'm wondering about coincidences. Today, the national VCS Emergencies Partnership held a desktop exercise looking at how we would collectively respond to a significant cyber attack that wiped out our emails, cloud services, even phone lines. What would we do? How would we make sure the people we support weren’t unsupported? How on earth would we communicate (smoke signals?). I was happy and fascinated to be involved. The coincidence is that this coincided with a weird sudden spike in dodgy emails apparently coming from non-dodgy contacts… “I’m attaching an invoice, can you open it and sign it please”… and various variations on the theme. I'm not alone. Many colleagues have experienced the same. Some are pretty easy to spot but some are very, very clever. One that we received a while back asked us to transfer some money to an account, looked like it came from me and looked very much like a legitimate request. We might have made that payment if our eagle-eyed Finance Assistant (thanks Sam!) hadn’t noticed that the email wasn’t signed off in the way I would normally sign something off and chose to call me to confirm whether it was real. According to the University of Central Lancashire, there were 7.78 million cyber-crimes in the last 12 months, and around 1/3 of charities reported some kind of breach or attack. According to the data, the average cost of a successful attack was about £460. I don’t know about you, but I can think of better uses for that £460 than lining a scammer’s pockets. We will add an agenda item on Cyber Security at our next Surrey Charities Forum meeting, but if you can’t wait, the Police’s The South East Cyber Resilience Centre has some very useful tools to help you prevent and deal with cyber-threats up to and including a free 30-minute chat to talk to you about your risks and response. Worth checking out, I feel. Finally, because I am a nerd at heart, I will leave you with this, in a broad Austrian accent: I’ll be back. Do you see what I did there?

  • Surrey Community Action reposted this

    View profile for Louise McGarr (Midgley), graphic

    Community Research & Voluntary Work Coordinator at Royal Holloway Volunteering

    Massive thanks to Surrey Community Action & specifically Justine Aldous for inviting Luke & myself to lead a session at this year’s Charity Mashup conference, the theme of which was “Collaboration”. The opening panel, hosted by Jason Gaskell, centred around the growing need for similar charities to create partnerships to make best use of limited funds & opportunities. This insightful discussion was kicked off by Michelle Blunsom MBE, who leads the Surrey Domestic Abuse Partnership: a group of four charities who work together across the whole of Surrey to ensure that survivors of domestic abuse are safe, and to build a future where domestic abuse is not tolerated. Next, we had Jonathan Lees, MD of The Good Company, a charity which works to prevent and alleviate poverty in East Surrey through a variety of services including foodbanks. Jonathan mentioned how collaboration takes time; contacts move on & you need to rebuild relationships again - a comment that resonates with everyone but is all the more true within the Higher Education sector, as we welcome a whole new cohort on an annual basis! Finally, Kerry Outlaw reiterated Michelle’s quote from Helen Keller, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”❤️ Workshop sessions followed including one on Collaboration from Emma Ewing of Big Fish Training. She cited an interesting collaboration between Network Rail and The Good Samaritan Society in which 30k staff were trained in suicide prevention, and this was subsequently expanded to include us all with the slogan “Small Talk Saves lives”. She also referenced Tuckman’s Team Development Model which I know Phil has previously cited: forming, storming, norming and performing! Luke & I challenged delegates’ existing perceptions of student volunteers with our session entitled, “Empowering Change: The Impact of Partnering with Student Volunteers for Charities”. We also talked about the different challenges faced by students these days, and how there are so many more demands upon their time but also their pockets. By tapping into students’ skill sets and making volunteering opportunities beneficial but also accessible, both parties will really reap the benefits. It was a great session and I really enjoyed the interactions we subsequently had! The final plenary was given by the brilliant Debra Allcock Tyler, CEO from the Directory of Social Change whom Royal Holloway Volunteering have now sounded out as keynote for our 2025 Volunteer Awards! Debra was a breath of fresh air, making the point that if there is less money in these financially challenging times then be open that deliverables will be reduced - obvious, yet I appreciate that in the charity sector that can be easier said than done. She also challenged perceptions that there are “too many charities” and why are similar charities viewed as “duplication” yet if the same comparison were to be made with supermarkets it would be considered “choice”. I could have listened to her all day!

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  • Words can't describe how proud I am of my team at Surrey Community Action. We pulled off another brilliant conference, and I'm still buzzing! Thanks again to Michelle Blunsom MBE, Jonathan Lees and Kerry Outlaw MBA FCIPD for a great plenary, and to Debra Allcock Tyler for an amazing closing address, not to mention all our fab workshop leaders - Louise Morris, Emma Ewing, Brian Seaton, Nikki Roberts, Yasmin Broome, Luke Russell, Louise McGarr (Midgley). Time to start planning next year's!

    Another Charity Mash-Up done and dusted. We had a great time and we hope you did too. We've already received some great feedback from delegates about today's event. Huge thanks to sponsors Qlic IT for Business, all of our stallholders, workshop leaders and presenters. We couldn't do this without you!

    • A montage of images from the Charity Mash-Up showing delegates seated in the hall, workshop leaders giving presentations, speakers answering questions, stallholders talking to delegates and delegates networking.

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